Hospital Saint-Antoine des Champs
The Abbey Saint-Antoine-des-Champs, more commonly known as Saint-Antoine Abbey today transformed into the Saint-Antoine Hospital (in the 12th arrondissement of Paris), was at the center of the development of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, The activity played a leading role in history.
Middle Ages
Until the twelfth century, the current location of the Saint-Antoine hospital was only thickets and marshes. Only an ancient Roman road, linking the center of Paris with Meaux and Melun, crosses the place, bathed by the streams that descend from the hills of Menilmontant or Belleville.
In 1198, Foulques de Neuilly, parish priest of Saint-Baudile (in Neuilly-sur-Marne), preacher of the Fourth Crusade on behalf of Pope Innocent III, built a small hermitage for depraved women in the marshes.
In 1204, the convent was transformed into an abbey of Cistercian obedience, on the initiative of Eudes de Sully, at the same time as the Abbey of Port-Royal, founded a little before. It is fortified and the water from the ditches is brought from the Seine by canals. Men-at-arms ensure its defense under the direct orders of the Abbess, who is nicknamed "la Dame du Faubourg". His church is consecrated to St. Anthony. Of Gothic style, its nave is flanked by aisles and a chevet and surmounted by an arrow. Pierre de Nemours, cousin and successor of Eudes, will take serious care of the abbey. Guillaume de Seignelay founded the Abbey of the Islands in Auxerre in 1210 with nuns from Saint-Antoine-des-Champs.
Between 1209 and 1218, figures of great families (Montfort [Laquelle?], Mauvoisin, Beaumont [Laquelle?]) Are among the donors of the abbey. Robert Mauvoisin founded a chapel in Saint-Antoine where he was buried. Also the relatives of these, the Cressonsacq, Aulnay, Garlande.
In 1229, King Louis IX erected the site as a royal abbey. The royal favors enjoyed by the nuns were reflected throughout the suburbs. Many craftsmen crowded around the abbey but nevertheless remain under the guise of Parisian corporations. Little by little, the marshes are dried up and then cultivated. In addition, the proximity of the Seine allows the supply of wood and encourages the installation of professionals of the furniture.
On August 18, 1239, Saint Louis exhibited in the precincts of the abbey the "Holy Crown" of thorns which he acquired from the emperor of Constantinople, Baldwin II. He himself carries it in his precious cassette when he enters Paris by the Porte Saint-Antoine.
In 1261, Louis IX confirmed a law of one of his predecessors, Louis VI Le Gros, on the vagrancy of pigs, but exempt the abbey Saint-Antoine, which will thus let go its pigs, provided they provide A bell marked with a cross so that they can be recognized.
Renaissance and the Enlightenment
In 1471, the abbey of Saint-Antoine-des-Champs benefited from a rare privilege by King Louis XI: the enfranchisement of the guardianship of corporations. Thus exempt from heavy taxes, craftsmen settle around the abbey. For more than a century and a half, the suburb used this advantage to deviate from hitherto severely regulated models and the profession began to use woods other than oak.
In the middle of the seventeenth century, the abbess, sometimes of royal blood, had in its fief about fifty streets. The abbey itself could accommodate no more than twenty young girls, who were offered, apart from education, heating and laundry, but it nevertheless was busy supplying the neighborhood. Its fortified enclosure also allowed it to accommodate the inhabitants of the town, which nevertheless did not always prevent it from being forced and plundered.
The abbey was attached to the temporal in the diocese of Paris, province of Sens until 1622, and to the province of Paris from that date.
From its foundation, the abbey is well endowed by the bishop of Paris, the king, the bourgeois families. It has rights over three tolls, Mantes, Lieusaint, Tournan. Its properties are located near the waterways within a radius of fifteen kilometers from Paris and in Paris itself, but also quite far in the Île-de-France. These include: Aulnay, Savigny fief des Mauvoisin [precision needed]
In 1211, Mauvoisin donated goods received by Agnes Mauvoisin, Dame de Cressonsacq, aunt of Isabelle Mauvoisin, on property located in Savigny.
In a charter of 1214, Jean V de Beaumont, with the consent of his first wife Alice, gave the abbey a muid of wheat on a barn between Paris and Montmartre. He had a fief at Clignancourt. Alice being related to the Mauvoisin.
In 1232, Saint-Antoine-des-Champs had land in Bondy and Noisy-le-Sec.
In July 1248 Jean and Guillaume de Beaumont subscribed an act, confirming an alms of 60 sols of rent seated by their deceased father on the census of Mitry in favor of the abbey.
In 1263 a toll is established on the passage of Bondy, until 1310.
Symon d'Allonville d'Oysonville (1458-1533), grand master of the waters and forests of France, son of Charles d'Allonville, is on trial with the nuns.
In 1530, Francis I made sell land to the abbeys, including his lands from Bondy to Saint-Antoine-des-Champs. The Saint-Antoine Hospital
By decree of February 11, 1791, the abbey Saint-Antoine is declared national property. Evacuated by the nuns, it became under the Convention the hospice of the East, on the one hand to palliate the lack of hospitals in this part of the capital, on the other hand to thank the inhabitants of the district for their active role In revolutionary events.
The church Saint-Antoine was razed in 1796. It is the architect Clavareau who is in charge of the development of the hospice. It launches the creation of two additional wings but is quickly stopped by lack of budget. The hospital, comprising two 72-bed rooms (one for women, one for men), has a medical team, a doctor, a pharmacist and about 15 nurses. The establishment changed its name in 1802 and became the Saint-Antoine hospital.
It was not until 1811 that the Hospitallers of Sainte-Marthe de Beaune, to which the hospital was entrusted until 1881, organized the distribution of care and medicines. Expansion of the premises continues and hygiene conditions are improving. In 1842, the hospital had 320 beds for a capacity three times as large as the opening.
At the end of the 19th century, great names in medicine became one of the most renowned hospitals: Georges Hayem, Marcel Lermenez, Brissaud and Ballet, and Antoine Béclère.
Remains of the Ancient Abbey
Of the old abbey, only the Pavillon de l'Horloge remains, the vestige of the cloister, and the insignia of the Saint-Antoine faculty, which reproduces the seal of one of the abbesses of Saint-Antoine, Marie de Bouthillier, engraved In a stone of the edifice in 1643: "Azure with 3 gold fuses ordered in fascia supported by a crosier of gold".
In 170 bis of the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Antoine, there is also the house of the keeper of the abbey, with a door to pilasters surmounted by a carved beam.
